As reported by Jerry Hirsch in today’s LA Times, my latest research article, co-authored with John Bohannon (the “Gonzo Scientist”) of Harvard University and Alexis Herschkowitsch of Fearless Critic Media, discusses the results of a blind tasting that we conducted of five puréed meat-based products. Although 72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste (Newell and MacFarlane multiple comparison, P<0.05), subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food.

The article has just been posted as a working paper (pdf) with the American Association of Wine Economists.

The relationship between tourists and the places that they like to go has been ambivalent since tourism—travel as entertainment—became a real global industry in the early 1900s. Sometimes cities become caricatures of themselves, molded into their own exaggerated and inauthentic images abroad. Other times, they just become ugly high-rise beach resorts or overcrowded, overpriced wastelands.

But then there are some places where something completely different happens—where the intersection of tourists and locals has spun off, across the years, into something newer and stranger than could ever have been contemplated by either party to begin with.

To say that Amsterdam, where pot, mushrooms, and hallucinogenic substances of all sorts are legal, is only about the drugs would be to adopt a narrow perspective on the city. But Amsterdam is about the drugs, and one of the funniest things about the middle-aged American tourists that visit Amsterdam in droves, most for the first time, many with their children, 

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The Fearless Critic Washington DC Area Restaurant Guide (Fearless Critic Media, 608 pages, paperback, $15.95, distributed by Workman) is now on its way to stores. The book reviews 500 restaurants in the greater DC area, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs out to the Beltway.

You can pre-order the book on amazon.com, which should receive stock within the week. The book will soon arrive at DC area stores, including Politics & Prose, Kramerbooks, B&N, Borders, and Books a Million.

In putting together the book, I worked with a team of critics and editors that included Alexis Herschkowitsch, Erin McReynolds, Rebecca Markovits, Justine Chiou, Coco Krumme, Sandra Di Capua, and Christina Dahlman.

At FENAVIN, the Spanish wine industry fair, in Ciudad Real on May 15 (blog entry at Aprende a Catar Vino (Spanish); articles about the talk at El Día del Ciudad Real, Cava Argentina, La Comarca de Puertollano, and Vendimia), I will talk talked to the Spanish wine industry on the following topics:

1. Are most wine critics impartial judges of quality, or are they really serving as public-relations advocates on behalf of producers? With evidence from my own empirical work, expository journalism, and a survey of the industry, I argue that most wine critics are really in the business of advertising wine, not judging it impartially. Critics are for sale. (more…)

The Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, Second Edition (Fearless Critic Media, 592 pages, paperback, $15.95, distributed by Workman) has been released. The book’s scope has been vastly increased, from 390 to 480 restaurants in the greater Austin, Texas area, including Round Rock and the Hill Country. It’s now available on amazon.com, and here’s a list of the Austin-area bookstores and retail stores that sell the book.

My devoted and patient team of editors and critics includes Rebecca Markovits and Monika Powe Nelson—the co-authors of the First Edition (released in 2006)—along with Alexis Herschkowitsch, Erin McReynolds, and Nat Davis.

My new book, The Wine Trials (Fearless Critic Media, 208 pages, paperback, $14.95, distributed by Workman Publishing), has been released. It’s now available on amazon.com, at Whole Foods Market stores nationwide, and at bookstores everywhere.

About the book:

Here’s the article we published showing that most wine drinkers prefer cheaper wines to more expensive wines:

Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? Evidence from a Large Sample of Blind Tastings (Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2008). Robin Goldstein, Johan Almenberg, Anna Dreber, John W. Emerson, Alexis Herschkowitsch, and Jacob Katz.

Abstract: Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a non-negative relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. These findings suggest that non-expert wine consumers should not anticipate greater enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of a wine simply because it is expensive or is appreciated by experts.